US country music legend Dolly Parton, who grew up poor in Tennessee and became a household name with hits like “Jolene,” has died at the age of 80, her family said Tuesday.
“Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus,” her nephew said in a video on social media. He said the multiple award-winning artist had “opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life.”
Her story
Back in 2008 at age 62, Dolly Parton released a single proclaiming she was “just a backwoods Barbie, too much makeup, too much hair.”
In her six decades recording and defining country music, she was so much more.
The American singer-songwriter, actress, businesswoman and philanthropist didn’t seem to mind being mistaken for a ditzy blonde all too eager to play up her looks, after growing up poor in rural Tennessee.
But Parton, who died Tuesday at age 80, was an immense and gifted talent who started writing serious music, what she called “sad-ass songs” about heartbreak and tragedy, at the tender age of 10.
By her own reckoning, she has penned 3,000 tunes in all, including enduring country standards like 1973’s “Jolene” and the iconic ballad “I Will Always Love You,” which became an international smash for Whitney Houston.
The “queen of country music” released 49 studio albums and more than 100 compilation and collaboration albums over a decades-long career that saw her sell more than 100 million records and top the charts more than any woman in the genre.
At the height of her fame, she reached number one on the pop charts too, with songs like “Islands in the Stream,” and starred in Hollywood blockbusters “9 to 5,” for which she sang the insuppressible title track, and “Steel Magnolias.”
Dolly essentially wrote the book on how a woman can rule the airwaves…
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